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Just as we seem to have completed our lofting drawing, Bob gives us some more to add, shifting the finishing line once again! But, it’s all good experience, and emphasises his point that from these outlines, the components can be made exactly to size for the boat building proper. And this is not just for the hull: the deck beams, the bulkheads, the positions of any engine bed, even the bunks and cupboards inside … all these can be taken from the lofting drawing.

But how can these lines be transferred onto a piece of wood? Well, there’s more than one way to skin this particular (ships) cat, but we used the good old ‘nail head’ method. Nails are laid perpendicular to the lines to be ‘lifted,’ their heads pressed into the line with a tap of a hammer. Then, a board is carefully laid on top, and pressed and hammered down. When the board is then lifted off, it has the indents of the tops of the nail heads. Beautifully simple, and a technique that goes back hundreds of years or more.

One the keel is ‘laid’, these frames are fixed on top of the keel, and everything held together, ready for the planking to begin.

We have also done another type of lifting, our first experience of lifting a boat out of the boathouse’s dock for it to go on its trailer. Great fun.

It’s about time that I said a bit about Boathouse 4 and its history, and about the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust and its links with IBTC Portsmouth.

Boathouse 4 is the last boathouse built for the Royal Navy.  It was constructed between 1938 – 40 – the only boathouse to be built in a home dockyard during the rapid rearmament period of the 1930s.

The building was originally to be built in two phases. The second phase would have extended it to Victory Gate, making it at least twice its current size. It was intended for Phase 1 to be fully operational before Phase 2 commenced, so a temporary corrugated steel wall was erected on the southern side. However, the Second World War broke out before Phase 1 was complete and, as a result, Phase 2 was never built – the temporary wall became permanent, and is still to be seen today. Whether true or not, holes in this corrugated steel wall are said by some to be bullet holes from marauding Messerschmidt fighters.

Boathouse 4 has its own dock, from which boats can be lifted onto the boathouse floor with the gantry cranes, some of which still have their WW2 camouflage. On the other side of the building is a canal with lock gate – the canal continues under the main road of the dockyard to the mast pond, where spars were soaked. With a thin metal sheet wall, and two areas of water open to the harbour and the prevailing winds, it’s no wonder that Boathouse 4 is perishingly cold in the winter. Ah, the joys of the boatbuilder’s life!

In 1941-43 it is believed that the building was involved in the construction of the secret prototype three-man midget submarine X4 and later X-craft developments. King George VI noted in his diaries that he secretly visited the Dockyard to view the X4 project. X-Craft were deployed to neutralise the German battleship Tirpitz in 1943. 

After a major refurbishment of Boathouse 4 in 2014/5 commissioned by the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust, the IBTC Portsmouth was duly established in 2015 – as an independent registered charity. However, it found itself unable to secure sufficient funding streams to make it viable, and ceased operating in August 2017. Certain assets were sold to Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust, which took over the college.

In 2017, the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust was granted £2.4m in LIBOR funding by the Chancellor for its Memorial Fleet project. The project’s aim is to create an operational Memorial Fleet of small craft which have played a significant role in the defence of the nation during the 20th century. (LIBOR funding comes from fines levied on the banking industry for manipulating the LIBOR rate, and has being used to support “those that represent the best of values,” in particular military and emergency services charities and other related good causes.)

The Trust’s Memorial Fleet project comprises: the First World War Armed Steam Cutter Falmouth, which served aboard the cruiser HMS Falmouth in 1916 and is one of only two known Jutland survivors to still exist; Foxtrot 8, a landing craft formerly aboard HMS Fearless which took part in the Falklands conflict; High Speed Launch 102 (HSL 102); and the Second World War Motor Gun Boat 81 (MGB 81). There is also a collection of other historic craft, including Cyclops, a 1916 workboat belonging to the World War 1 battleship Royal Sovereign, which is currently being worked upon.

In addition, a replica is currently being built of Coastal Motor Boat 4 (CMB 4) which, under the command of Lt Augustus Agar, sank the Bolshevik cruiser Oleg in 1919. This most extraordinary Thornycroft designed 40 ft torpedo boat is worthy of its own blog post in due course. The only remaining original example of the CMBs is about to be moved to Boathouse 4 from the Imperial War Museum Duxford.

Boathouse 4 is free to visit (there’s only a fee for visiting HMS Warrior, HMS Victory and the Mary Rose Museum). There’s lots to see, and you can see me and the other students at work on the the boathouse floor. There are tours at 1400 daily with a volunteer, and I can also give friends and family a tour of the floor too.

This week was the first of our boatbuilding course proper, having completed our extended joinery course before the late May Bank Holiday. Yet it is hard to let go of our benches in Joinery 1. We feel safe there, after 13 weeks developing hand woodworking skills that were a mystery and a distant goal when we started.

So, with an Instructor off sick, and the remaining instructors trying to juggle all the balls, we spent Monday and Tuesday morning – and other spare moments through the week – at our joinery room benches. Each of us had small projects that kept ourselves gainfully occupied. Two of us made ourselves some ‘winding sticks.’ They can be bought on eBay for £60 – an inordinate price for two straight sticks with some simple inlay!

I was so pleased with them, that I just had to mount them in my toolbox’s lid. So here’s a picture of my ‘finished’ tool chest (parenthesis added because there’s always room for some adjustment or tarting up!).

I have also started making a wooden Dorade box. More joinery, really, but a link with big boat boatbuilding – after all, they were designed for the famous 52 foot racing yacht, Dorade, which was launched in 1930, at a cost of $28,000. A tapered dovetail joint is used for the baffle, which is a new type of dovetail joint for us, so it’s a worthwhile project for that reason alone – even if I do end up using it as yet another box!

We had a lecture on lofting basics on Monday, and on Tuesday afternoon we were let loose on the loft floor – well a few sheets of 8×4 foot plywood, painted white, which we screwed down to the wooden boards below.

We are lofting a 10 foot dinghy using an enlarged set of line drawings from a book. The measurements are laid out in a table of offsets. “There are a few errors in the figures” said Bob, our instructor. Oh, great!

Using a (blue) chalk line, we set out the base line and centre lines for the sheer plan (side view) and the Half Beam Plan (bird’s eye view). Old school geometry came in here for ‘erecting a perpendicular’ from these chalk lines and then drawing out a grid. Using the table of offsets, we plotted out the Base Plan, checking that the lines created are ‘fair.’ No straight lines here, it’s all about fair lines i.e smooth curves that look “right.”

After just three and a half days, we have lofted the boat, all bar plotting a new transom – “just to make it more fun” said Bob. More geometry and brain gymnastics here. It is certainly a steep learning curve, thinking in two dimensions, then three dimensions, and then looking at four planes of perspective. But great fun too – we are so pleased that, unlike the last group who did this as a desk top exercise, we are doing this for real.

The next step (and blog installment) is taking patterns and moulds for frames and components directly from the full-size drawings we have created … this is real boat building!

Friday saw the last day of our slightly extended joinery course. As a nod to the timetabled move from Joinery to Boatbuilding, scheduled for 28th May, we had a couple of lectures: naming boat parts, and interpreting line drawings, but we continued to work in Joinery 1, our second home for the previous 12 weeks. It did mean that most of us completed our Deck Beam exercise, and our stepladders which is quite an achievement. Frustratingly, my third deck beam – the one being marked for City & Guilds – was the worst of the three … rather loose. But it’s done, and I also managed to put some fittings in my tool chest lid on Friday, to accommodate some saws, which was a good note on which to end the week.

This week is an INSET week – i.e. a designated week’s holiday. We headed down to Cornwall, to see James and Steph in Helston for a few days, and we had a super time. We were joined by Tony, Sylvia’s brother, and visited both old and new sights/venues/restaurants: our favourite fishing village of Porthleven, and some beaches that were new to us (Porthadu & Gyllynvase). James took Sylvia, Tony and I on a tour of the base, and this time we had a guided tour of the cockpit of a Merlin from one of the trainee pilots – more switches than you can shake a stick at!

We start on lofting next week. Lofting is the taking of line drawings to full-scale, and then using these to make moulds and components for the build. This process was only superseded by computer CAD drawings in the 1980s. Previously, and traditionally, the only space to draw out the full size of a boat or ship was the loft above the boathouse floor – hence the term ‘lofting.’

This week, I managed to finish my stepladder and, although there were some hurdles, and it is not quite perfect, it looks good and works well – I am pleased with the final result.

I am now moving on to the deck beam exercise, and the angled dovetail, complete with its ‘flair’ is taxing my grey cells. Here’s the start, with mock gunwales set into a jig, and the fist beam, cut and shaped, ready to start the joints.

We have to fit three beams, and the last one is marked for the City & Guilds qualification. Hopefully, I will finish this in the coming four day week – an extension to our 12 week joinery course, which finished on Friday with the awarding of certificates! Because we have got the first week of June off, it has been decided that we will move from joinery to the boathouse itself on 10th June.

The main news and the biggest joy of the week was the safe arrival on Monday of Lily, our second grandchild. Siobhan and David are very proud parents – rightly so. She is a beautiful baby, just as her mother (and no-doubt her maternal grandmother) was. Both she and Siobhan are doing well, and Noah is very pleased with his new baby sister …

With the tool chest completed, I have been ‘moving on’ to other projects. Here is an update on my work to date.

If we have time, we are due to make a stepladder. Not everyone starts or completes this project during their 12 weeks in Joinery, but that’s the goal (and a deck beam to boot). The stepladder has a fold down platform and, to get a bit of boatbuilding joinery in on the act, the platform is made up of a grating – like on the cabin sole of a yacht – or a shower tray!

Lots of joints and a need for accuracy, but the result is very pleasing. “So sharp, you’d better be careful not to cut yourself,” was the pleasing comment from the head of the school, Barnaby.

Next a bollow plane. A bollow is used to hollow! We will use it to shape the blades of oars. Chiselling out the recesses was quite tricky!

We will be making spars later, so have made a spar gauge, which is used to mark lines along the spar, in order to help us plane it from a square section of timber into a round one. More on that in due course. For now, here’s the finished article.

Last, but not least, we have to make a spirit level. This was a really satisfying little piece, and I am pleased with the result, duly stained … with Peacock oil, no less!

With these smaller projects duly completed, I am pleased to report that I have started my stepladder today. A couple of the lads are a day or two ahead of me, and have found it really challenging, so I hope it doesn’t throw up too many difficulties and I can make good progress.

My, how time flies! Lots to report, but first, an update on my Tool Chest.

After getting the lid adjusted to the base with no gaps, it was time to get the hinges on, and the weather strip fitted.

I made a cock up when fitting the weather strip, by positioning the screw holes for the weather strip on the back of the box in line with the screws on the tray rail below. Looked great, except, I had already done the same for the lid rest, and now the new holes were overlapping the screws for the lid rest. I had to move the screws for the lid rest and fill the original holes, so that I could re-drill holes for the weather strip. Argh!

Thankfully, some good came of my mistake as Bob, one of the Instructors, showed me how to plug the holes effectively and efficiently with wooden pegs quickly fashioned with a sharp chisel. A trick that will no-doubt be useful in future – in fact I have already passed it on to one of the other students who did the same thing on one of his screw holes.

Time to fit the lock … and another own goal. With the lock fitted, the lid now sat slightly askew. The link plate in the lid was 1mm off to the left, forcing the lid to the right when closed.

I had marked it correctly, but not believed the markings, so had cut just off the line. I cursed my distrust of my markings, and spent a goodly time getting it righted. Lesson learnt – I hope – as it will be even more important not to distrust my markings when I move onto spiling planks (marking out for planking a hull), where complex curves in there dimensions can become straightened when in two dimensions … challenges to come!

Now, the escutcheon. I took a piece of an African hardwood, Wenge, made a key hole and fashioned it into a diamond shape. Having marked its position, I cut out a rebate for the escutcheon and fitted it in. Rather than chamfer it and leave it proud, I decided to flush it with the surface of the box, and am very pleased with the result.

The wooden handle blocks were next, and my tool chest just needs some tool trays. These trays and a smaller sliding lid box were made from a soft wood. Cutting the dovetails is in some ways more difficult than in hard wood. Though it cuts easily, the wood crushes and marks very easily.

So, my Tool Chest is pretty much complete. I just need to give it another quick sanding, and then will apply a finish. Rather than varnish, I am going to use an oil and wax finish – Peacock Oil no less – made by Shane Skelton of Skelton saws. (https://www.skeltonsaws.co.uk/peacock-oil). Not sure how much I needed, I rang Skelton saws on Good Friday, planning to leave a message, but ended up speaking with Shane, interrupting his gardening. He very kindly gave me a quick tutorial over the phone, and said that one 250ml bottle will suffice. I hope so, at £24.00 a bottle! At least it’s cheaper than his saws.

This last week, Week 10, has been another short week due to 1st May Bank Holiday, but in these four days I have completed two other projects and will finish a third tomorrow. I have some photos to upload first, so will post again asap.

The 1st of April saw me complete my last practice dovetail joint. Time, at last, to be given a plank from the pile of Welsh Oak stacked up at the back of the joinery shop.

It is said that ‘wood is like life … it has knots in it.’ Certainly, there have been a few ‘knots’ in the last few years in the Practice … and my oak plank has more knots than most!

These woody knots have created some challenges – and not a few curses – with the grain of the wood changing direction all over the place. This makes planing and smoothing quite difficult at times. However, as in life, these knots build character, and I think that the overall result will be the better for them … I hope so.

Having sawn my plank into four lengths, for the two sides and ends, I set to ‘facing and edging’ one of the boards. This involves planing the surface flat, whilst also correcting the twist (using winding sticks); and then getting one of the edges straight and square to the face. It was hard work (hard on my right wrist, with tendonitis flaring again), and difficult … and it took the best part of three days. Thank goodness we only have to face and edge one of the four boards! Week 5 ended with one of the instructors machining my four boards to the required thickness and width.

Like the others, I clamped the finished boards to my bench, for fear of them moving and warping due to the change in thickness. It’s amazing how much, even seasoned wood, can move when a plank is reduced in length or thickness. The loss of the surrounding timber, with its own twists and stresses, releases the remaining wood to take its own direction. I am minded of the way that I feel a change in myself, released from the tensions and the constraints of full-time General Practice … free to move and change, and adapt to a new way of life.

Week 6 was spent making the dovetail joints and making a rebate for the lid to sit in. The knots in my wood create fault lines, which have resulted in about four splits in the boards as I fitted the joints. One split appeared just as I cut a set of dovetails in the board. This without any additional stresses put upon the wood – I hadn’t even tried to fit the joint together!

With the joints all cut and fitted, Bob Hope (one of the Instructors), and I forced the splits open and I pushed in glue, then clamped them overnight.

By the end of the week, the landmark position of glueing up the sides of my box was finally in sight. I worked quickly (unusually so!), to plane a rebate in the four sides of my box, ready to take the lid.

It was now 4.30 on Friday, almost packing up time, but I was desperate to get my box sides glued up. Bob Forsyth (another Instructor), and I set to work, both of us quickly brushing glue into the joints, as he told me how in the times before glue, varnish would be used to give these mechanical dovetail joints a little extra strength. So, week six concluded with my box sides all glued up – a real landmark in my tool chest’s progress.

Week 7 – difficult to believe it’s seven weeks since I started – has been spent fitting my lid to the slightly concave sides of the top of my box; fitting the base; planing off the ‘horns’ of my dovetail joints; and cleaning up the outside of the sides of my box – again, all the more difficult because of the multiple changes in direction of the grain. Then, the nail-biting cutting open the box to make a lid; and the tricky fitting of the lid to the base: finessing the varying grain once more.

Last Thursday was spent starting on the various rails to be fitted to the box but, with my wrist playing up badly again, I managed to get most of these machined after ‘facing and edging’ just two of the six. Finally, feeling cheated by this being a four day week, I started to fit the skirting board to my tool chest.

There’s a good few steps to go, but it’s real fun doing them. Progress seems to be quicker now.

Above all, I can see how much the knots add character to the final result … and to my sense of achievement thus far.

We have now completed the first four weeks of our 12 week joinery course. Time flies! More joints, of course, “moving on,” as our instructor is won’t to say.

Scarf joints are used when planking hulls, and for building keels and joining them to stem posts. After a lot of planing my stock to make it square and flat, I was developing tenosynovitis by the end of week three. Thankfully, Ibuleve gel was rapidly effective, and it has been OK since.

As we complete each joint, we take them to our Instructor, to get his advice, eager for his approval. “Try another set” means ‘That’s not good enough.’ “Time to move on … we’ve a lot to get through” means ‘It’ll just about do’; “Fine” seems to mean ‘That’s OK,’ perhaps even ‘That’s all right,’ and is a prized response. “Good” is the greatest accolade … only occasionally given.

Funny how we are so anxious to please, to be liked … for our work to be appreciated and approved by others. This ‘need’ is no-doubt found in other walks of life, but it is certainly a key aspect to our self esteem as physicians, and something I find that I miss now that I have stepped aside from mainstream General Practice. No wonder then, that I feel a drive to do well – and to be told that I am doing so.

Anyway, here are my four scarf joints .. in order of increasing complexity!

With our scarf joints completed, we were all on to the ‘dreaded’ Dovetail joints this week – on target apparently. All that’s needed is to saw the dovetails and the pins square and straight, and to get them to fit well … no gaps, but not too tight either. Accurate sawing is a skill that doesn’t come easily – not to me at least. So, it’s humbling – and not a little frustrating – to find that I am having to learn to use a saw accurately. I struggle to get the cut square on to the face of the wood, which makes it so much more difficult to get a good fit. At least I am improving with each attempt.

When each set is complete, the joint is cut off the boards, which are are passed to us to try again. By the third set of dovetails, I was hoping that they would go perfectly, and be the last. But alas no, more attempts were needed … six so far. I do hope this last one is OK. I have yet to get this joint passed, but I have decided to “move on” and have started on Mitred Dovetails.

Once we have mastered dovetail joints – Through Dovetails, Mitred Dovetails, and Hidden Dovetails – we start on our Tool Chest. It’s going to be a real test of our learning and skills, and will take a few weeks to complete … it will certainly test our ability to saw square and straight!

The MoD Police drug sniffer dogs have been in the Historic dockyard this month, and we have been warned that they will detect the smell of cannabis use the previous evening; and that there is a zero-tolerance policy on the base. My guilty conscience means that I have never tried ‘substances’ as they are euphemistically called by those in the know.

It has been another busy week: we completed the oilstone box, and are applying French polish (aka shellac), to give it a finish. A few coats more, and it will be looking really good, I hope.

While each coat dries, it’s straight on: to half lap and cover-lap joints, and to mortise and tenon joints.

I have used some of the techniques I have seen demonstrated by Paul Sellers on his excellent website and videos – worth a look if you are minded to try some woodworking with hand tools – but am also using the more straightforward techniques that we are supposed to follow. There are many ways to skin a cat and it’s worth trying a few out: not only to see what works best, but also to ensure I have tried – and learnt – different techniques.

Now we are on to a Joiner’s Rod: more of the above joints, but with the added challenge of accuracy of measurements to follow a diagrammatic plan. I am trying not to be too much of a perfectionist – our Instructor drops the odd hurry up comment: “There’s a lot to get through.” Indeed, we have yet to face the challenge of dovetail joints – which will then lead on to our tool chest.

Ironically, the students now doing the boat building say that after the three month joinery course with its strictly straight lines, there are no straight lines at all out on the boathouse shop floor … it’s all complex curves – “fair lines.”

We have had heavy rain and strong winds on and off for two weeks now, but I have managed to cycle in most days, and this week I have got to the gym (The Shed) on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, as agreed with my ex-Navy – “I don’t think I told you to do it that way” – PTI. Helps to work off the (once weekly) post college ‘drink at the pub:’ a ritual well worth keeping up!

Yesterday, we attended our great friends’ annual St Patrick’s Day party. Once again, I provided some percussion, of a sort, with the cajon and bodhran. We do a ‘set’ of about 8-9 songs, at the end of the evening – timing I am glad about, as I hope everyone has had sufficient to drink to not notice my shortcomings! It was a great craic, as the Irish say, but I am determined to do some more practicing for next year. But, then again, I said that last year.

For the last couple of years or so, I have felt a certain melancholy come Sunday evening as I face the Monday to come. Now, happily, I’m looking forward to tomorrow and a few more joints – wooden, of course.